Things have been a little quiet recently regarding CD Projekt RED’s latest game, The Witcher 3, until the recent GDC. Thanks go out to Kotaku for finding out these details in a talk with the development team, and now that we know it seems about time to tell the rest of The Witcher‘s fanbase. Most of these details were gleaned through talking to lead gameplay designer Maciej Szczesnik, head of marketing Michal Platkow-Gilewski and CD Projekt RED Managing Director Adam Badowski.

– Firstly this will be Geralt’s last adventure, and will bring the game series to a close (at the moment anyway). It also won’t require knowledge of the previous games to play, which is great for new players.

– There will be more than 100 hours of gameplay and the side and main quests can be resolved in whatever order you want.

– The game is entirely open world, and is 35 times bigger than The Witcher 2.

– It is a branching story and the world is “completely gone”.

– Quicktime events will be gone entirely. (Thank the lord, these really get annoying after a while)

– There will be 36 different “world states” that your decisions will cause to go into effect, and three different playable ‘epilogies’.

– Dandelion will return, taking on a similar duty to his role in The Witcher 2 narrating recaps of the story as you go. There will still be a journal, but there will also be a ‘previously on The Witcher 3′ type video which plays at various points, and this feature is called ‘Storybook’.

Dandelion will be back in The Witcher 3. Sweet!

– The learning curve will be much smoother in the new game, so you won’t be thrown in at the deep end. 

– Geralt will react different in combat, with different stances for fighting one enemy and fighting a stronger enemy or a larger group. By looking at his stance you can see the danger level for the current situation.

– Romance will play a more integral part of the story, and decisions you make with women in the game will affect all sorts of things. Much more of the game revolves around Geralt finding his love, Yennifer.

– The animation system has lots of unique combat animations, which are randomly selected and chained together depending on where Geralt is swinging and what direction he is moving.

– Every button press gets you a single move in combat.

– The dodge is no longer a roll, but rather a pirouette to dodge enemies.

– You can parry attacks.

– There will be 10 Witcher’s Signs instead of 5, as there will be a second casting mode for each sign which you can buy by levelling up.

– You have combat sills you can use, up to 4 active in combat.

– There won’t be any arm-wrestling in the game. (I’m sure that somewhere someone is extremely disappointed!)

– Hand to hand combat works completely differently. It’s now part of the main combat system, and will have moves that work and flow similarly to swordfighting.

– Alchemy will be “more supportive”, and players will be able to complete the game focusing on Alchemy.

– You can now drink potions while in combat, including healing potions. The Witcher 3 still has toxicity, and will retain the way that Geralt can become poisoned from drinking too many (so don’t go spamming those healing potions!)

– You can fight on horseback, but it won’t be a focus in the game. Geralt is, after all, a swordfighting master who is best fighting on the ground.

– There’s a full range of weather and day/night settings, so don’t worry, it won’t all be doom, gloom and dark skies!

– Doors will finally work properly!

– CD Projekt RED are planning to support The Witcher 3 in a similar way to The Witcher 2, with lots of post-release updates. Not all of them will be free, but the support is still there!

That’s about it for updates so far. It’s looking to be a pretty good game so far! Again thanks to Kotaku for finding all this information out. What do you guys think, are you looking forward to the last installment in The Witcher series? Let us know with a comment.